i had a dream about you...
by adriant
Summary: (rated for language) seifer's story of his life year by year..r


1.1.1  
  
1.1.2 Â Â Â Â Â I had a dream about you the other morning; when I finally got to sleep, that is. I was in a crowded room somewhere, and you were standing in the middle, holding a silver bowl. I couldn't see what was in it. I kept pushing and pushing, but there were too many people, and finally you disappeared. So did everyone else, then, and I was alone, in a silent gray place of stone. I think I remembered it from somewhere. But all I could see, still, was the image of you, like it was burned across my mind. Standing there, at the center, holding out a silver bowl. Smiling at everyone.  
  
1.1.3 Â Â Â Â Â Dreams are pretty stupid sometimes, aren't they.  
  
1.1.4  
  
1.1.5 -becalming-  
  
I  
  
1.1.6  
  
1.1.7 Â Â Â Â Â A hurricane may be the deadliest thing out there if you ask an old fisherman's wife, but I think I know better. The deadliest thing is the calm when the storm ends. The winds die down, the water calms... and suddenly, you're lost at sea.  
  
1.1.8 Â Â Â Â Â Seems like I finally got stuck on the water myself, these days. Funny how that works. One minute it's all wind and waves... It's been a couple of weeks now, here in Balamb, just trying to figure out what to do. Trying to catch a wind. The guys have been pretty good, for their part, even if they don't know quite what to do with me anymore. I figure they'll probably just give up and leave any day now, really. My posse. Right. Little kids playing cowboys and indians. Except maybe a couple of us grew up, somewhere down the line.  
  
1.1.9 Â Â Â Â Â Wonder which?  
  
1.1.10 Â Â Â Â Â So now it's some ugly time between dark and dawn, and colder than Shiva's cunt on the ocean, and this cheap trinket hotel is still enough to be its own reflection in the water, and about 300 miles from sleep I'm out on the balcony watching the moon watch me, and I'm thinking about the calm after the storm.  
  
1.1.11 Â Â Â Â Â Thinking about hurricanes.  
  
1.1.12  
  
1.1.13 Â Â Â Â Â It wasn't really what you'd call a psychic flash, or even a premonition, when it first came. More like remembering in reverse. Like the skeleton of a little kid creeping up to take your hand one night and whispering in your ear.  
  
1.1.14 Â Â Â Â Â I just knew something was coming. That's all, really. It was plenty then. The sense of tension building, like a barometer shift. It made me itchy, anxious, feeling it there but not knowing what it was. I wound up fighting more, sleeping less. Pretty much par for the course for me, to be as honest as I might as well be now, but still... more so than usual. I remember calling Squall out for about the thousandth time -- even if it was probably only the first time I actually managed to piss him off. I was kinda proud of that. Even kinda proud of the scar. Well, mine, I mean. I was definitely proud of his.  
  
1.1.15 Â Â Â Â Â Thinking about it now just makes me wince. Stupid little kids who don't even know when to come in out of the rain. Stupid kids who think they're smart, and tough, and whatever else they want to be. Little cowboys waving their guns in the air.  
  
1.1.16 Â Â Â Â Â Heh. Ladies and gentlemen, the maudlin ex-antihero, give 'im a hand. Next show at a fucking sensible hour.  
  
1.1.17 Â Â Â Â Â Hopefully.  
  
1.1.18 Â Â Â Â Â You know what I need? A drink. Or a smoke. God, could I use a cigarette or twenty. I quit years ago, figured out it was only gonna make me weaker, but hey, who'm I gonna fight now? Raijin? The desk clerk? Myself?  
  
1.1.19 Â Â Â Â Â The lobby's stocked pretty well, at least -- that I'll say for the place. Can't say I was much for coming here; looks like a carnival ride. Kinda appropriate, really. It feels sort of like I ran away with the circus. Or it ran away with me. No interruptions on the way from or back to the balcony, either -- not much of a surprise, not this late, but still a plus. It's okay here, I guess. Just a relief that everybody seems to have decided to forget everything they don't want to remember, and that includes me. Some things, people can't keep in their minds; they just keep slithering away. Never thought I'd be one of them.  
  
1.1.20 Â Â Â Â Â Guess I shouldn't be smoking now. Not like it's going to help me sleep, though I'm not too worried anymore. I'm not sure I really want to sleep anyway, tell the truth. Nowhere much to go if anything comes after me there. You know what I mean?  
  
1.1.21 Â Â Â Â Â Hurricanes. Right.  
  
1.1.22 Â Â Â Â Â Like a dog smelling a storm a few miles off. That was just how it felt. Like the air was electrified and the clouds were about to rupture. And no, I didn't know what it was, but I should admit that I had an idea, a stupid wistful little thing, somewhere in the back of my head. I just didn't know how damn close it would come to what I'd almost forgotten I was hoping for. I didn't know it was going to be, if you'll excuse the expression, a dream come true.  
  
1.1.23 Â Â Â Â Â See -- and okay, I'll level with you -- here's where I start making confessions. You had to know it was going to be that kind of story. And I'm sure, no matter what you might say about it, underneath you're probably just as sick of that shit as I am. Trust me, I am not singing the Ballad Of How I Did What I Did Because, Alas, The World Has Been Cruel To Poor Me, okay? You do it, and that's it; it's what you did, and most of the time, it's what you keep doing. Well, here's what I kept doing, and I'm sure this'll be a great big surprise: I was a bully. I was a damn good bully, too, and I had a great time doing it. Everybody has one thing going for them; I believe that. That was mine. I could beat up on everybody littler than me, and I could make them mad, make them scared of me. And it was great. If you'd ever been a school bully -- not that I think you would've been -- you'd know what I'm talking about. There's a power in that, maybe not the best kind, but it's still power. Some of us take it anywhere we can get it. Sometimes you have to.  
  
1.1.24 Â Â Â Â Â But the biggest problem is, it doesn't last, because bullies always grow up. One day you run out of milk money to take, and all of a sudden there's a real world out there and it's all around you, and the only thing you know how to do doesn't work out there, and you wind up on a corner somewhere pumping gas for the guys whose glasses you used to break, watching them grow up and succeed as much as anybody does and actually build something that looks like a life out of the shit we're given, and watching them bite down every time they see you and pretend to be the bigger man. I saw that coming a mile away, and it wasn't what I wanted. Not even close. I didn't want to let it go. I didn't want all I had taken away like that. Only trouble, I knew, was it didn't matter. I was doomed anyway. I guess we all are.  
  
1.1.25 Â Â Â Â Â And then one day, out of the blue, I happened to pick up a book on the Sorceress Wars. Adel. Now there was a chick who knew about power. She knew about scaring people, getting her way. Just a big bully, you could call her. Except she got to keep the gig. She didn't have to grow up, drop it all and be normal. She didn't lose everything in a few years. Well, okay, except for when the country united and rebelled against her after a few years, sealed her power, and locked her up in stasis in outer space, so that she lost everything. Like I was looking at that part. Like kids ever do.  
  
1.1.26 Â Â Â Â Â So that became my next big thing, my great idea. I read that book cover to cover and then back again, and when I finally finished with it I went out and got a dozen more. That was how it got started. After all, sorceresses always had knights. It was in all the movies, all the books too. And that sounded like a plan. Later it was different, it changed and got more complicated, it twisted and turned around into something else; but back then, that was pretty much all it was. A plan. A plot to beat real life and win forever.  
  
1.1.27 Â Â Â Â Â By then, I was already at Garden. By then, I guess it was already too late.  
  
1.1.28  
  
1.1.29 Â Â Â Â Â Okay. As long as I'm here, why not? Didn't I say it was going to be that kind of story? I might as well tell it right, I guess. From the beginning, not around the bush.  
  
1.1.30 Â Â Â Â Â Let's get this clear. I don't expect this to make you like me. I don't expect you to think I'm a sympathetic kind of guy who got put in a bad situation. I expect you to look at this and see an arrogant little shit who probably deserved what he got, who did a lot of stupid things and let a lot of stupid things be done to him, and who ended up sprawled on his back looking at the mess he made and wondering how the hell it all happened, anyway. Because that's all there is to see. I don't have any illusions about who I am, not anymore, and if there's anything out there worse than a hurricane, I'll tell you right now, that's gotta be it.  
  
1.1.31 Â Â Â Â Â So let me tell you something; with that out of the way. Let me tell you something that you probably don't need to know, but I need to say anyway, because that's the way it works sometimes, I guess.  
  
1.1.32 Â Â Â Â Â Let me tell you about the storm.  
  
1.1.33  
  
1.1.34 -hurricane-  
  
I  
  
1.1.35  
  
1.1.36 Â Â Â Â Â Like I said, I don't really care what you make of my life one way or the other. I'm not fishing for sympathy, and I don't mind if you just think I'm an idiot, either. So I'm not trying to get anything from you, and I'm not trying to slant this any particular way. These are just the facts.  
  
1.1.37 Â Â Â Â Â Fact number one. My mother died when I was about two years old. I don't remember her at all; just my father. Probably he killed her. No one ever told me for sure. He drank like he was born to do it, and hit me like it was all he was supposed to do in between. When I got to Garden and had some preliminary X-rays, the doctor said she didn't know how I could have broken so many bones as long ago as they had been. I said I didn't either. No point in making people look at me like a microscope slide just to get at someone who was already dead. It's not like I hate him. He wasn't enough to hate. Would you hate a wind that knocked over your house? A wind that threw you through a door and called you worthless? It all comes to about the same.  
  
1.1.38 Â Â Â Â Â We lived by the ocean, near the south of someplace that wasn't quite part of Galbadia yet. One night when I was five, a storm blew off the ocean, a big one, and it went right over us. Turned the beach inside out and knocked out the lights.  
  
1.1.39 Â Â Â Â Â Fact number two. When I was five I killed my father.  
  
1.1.40 Â Â Â Â Â After that they took me away.  
  
1.1.41  
  
1.1.42 Â Â Â Â Â This comes out all wrong when I try to tell it. I'm not sure I can tell it. I'm not sure I know what I'm trying to tell. Just talking shit, I guess. Still. Who's gonna complain?  
  
1.1.43 Â Â Â Â Â So. The orphanage. That was next.  
  
1.1.44  
  
1.1.45 Â Â Â Â Â Matron -- Edea -- was the hardest to deal with. I'd never had anything so much like a mother before. I didn't really know what to do with her. Seems like the feeling was mutual, too, though I didn't really get it so much then. Once I figured out I wasn't in my father's house anymore and this new place didn't have any angry gods looming, I spent most of my time either trying to make myself the new god or curled up somewhere wondering why everyone hated me. Some people don't work out the connections for a couple years, assuming they ever do. I don't remember when social interaction started to sort itself out in my brain, but I know I didn't care once it did. Like I said, it always made a lot more sense just to be the bully. I don't remember much of those days, but Matron -- Edea -- must have had a bitch of a time trying to deal with me, too. Not that she showed it. She was good like that. She'd come find me when I was hiding out and sulking, and talk to me for a while. I remember that. She really tried to civilize me, get me to join the other kids without any screaming or violence or property damage. I guess sometimes it even worked, sort of. I don't know for sure what she made of me or the way I acted. I know sometimes she would ask me about what things were like before I went there, and I always tried to pretend I'd been a normal happy kid. I don't really remember why. I guess I wanted her to like me, though I don't remember thinking anything like that. Later -- much later -- she told me that she knew all the time more or less what had happened, but she wanted to give me more time, and let me tell her when I needed to.  
  
1.1.46 Â Â Â Â Â She ran out of time, though. Three years later Garden was there, and I went to Garden. You know what they say about the best-laid plans.  
  
1.1.47 Â Â Â Â Â No, I don't really remember much about it. It was a long time ago. And that really is the whole reason, before you ask -- I never even thought about touching one of the GFs, and I definitely believed what they said about the shit those things do to your brain. I wasn't going to forget it; that was a deal I made with myself a long time back. Some things you just need to remember.  
  
1.1.48 Â Â Â Â Â I didn't have any friends, I remember that much. What did I need friends for? People weren't worth the weight they put on you; I knew that already. My father had taught me that. That much I guess I can thank the fucker for. Plus, to be a little more honest about it, nobody wants to be friends with the kid who hits. So I didn't have friends. But there was always Squall. Which was something else completely.  
  
1.1.49 Â Â Â Â Â See, I never liked Squall, but that doesn't mean I disliked him, either. He was -- interesting. Don't know how to put it better than that. Later on, I knew he was a good fighter, I would admit that, but that wasn't it. It was more like... he wouldn't let it get to him. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, I bet you do. He'd put all his faith on someone, and they'd let him down, and he'd just put it away like it was nothing. You could always tell it was something, but he got better and better at making it nothing until you couldn't tell the difference anymore. I didn't know what to make of that. And he'd never let me get to him, as far as that went. He didn't have any angry gods. That just pissed me the hell off. Who was he to have it so easy? Who was he, not having to care? I wanted to make him hate me, just so I could see him live with the kind of thing I lived with. I wanted to be his petty god. His idiot wind.  
  
1.1.50 Â Â Â Â Â This is the dumbest shit you've ever heard of, isn't it? Stick with me. It gets worse.  
  
1.1.51  
  
1.1.52 Â Â Â Â Â I might not have liked any of them, or gotten along with them -- not that I actually disliked any of them, really, or that I got along with anybody -- but I remembered. That was the key. I always had that. If I needed something it was going to be there -- that was the first thing I decided. I didn't like the idea that I couldn't trust my own head. In my experience that had been all I could ever trust. You don't give up handholds like that too easily -- no more easily than ones like being a bully. So I hung on, and even though I was the first to go to Garden, I was the last one to remember any of it. By the end, I was the only one who really knew, and even then I didn't think much about it. Except Squall -- of course. Squall was going to be with me a long time.  
  
1.1.53 Â Â Â Â Â It wasn't too much longer before he was at Garden too, see. But it was already my turf. And there he was, not caring all over it.  
  
1.1.54 Â Â Â Â Â Something had to be done. I was the bully, after all. But the Garden had rules -- lots of them. I noticed especially since I was breaking them so much. After your third fight you get expelled; I was on something like two and a half by the time I started finding ways to make them "sparring". Because after a while, I wondered if I could use the rules instead. After all, they'd done enough using me.  
  
1.1.55 Â Â Â Â Â So I let that sit for a while. I was going to need help for it to work.  
  
1.1.56 Â Â Â Â Â Other than that, life in Garden was mostly really boring. You went to classes. You did homework. You ate. You slept. You practiced. Eight years old when I started out. Fuck, that's more than half my life gone. Eight years old when I saw my first gunblade and I knew that was what I had to learn. Some movie I saw, a long time before. Something about knights.  
  
1.1.57 Â Â Â Â Â Yeah, yeah, I'm getting to that.  
  
1.1.58 Â Â Â Â Â The guys turned up when we were all about eleven. I meant it when I say they turned up; they just appeared out of somewhere, on another dark and stormy night. World's full of em. Somebody found them and dragged them into Garden, somebody else who thought he was cute gave them their names. They didn't remember a thing beforehand. Well, Fuujin didn't, anyway, and if Raijin did, he wasn't quite smart enough or dumb enough to talk about it. And hey, here's another law of society: if you're a big dumb kid who hulks even at eleven and looks kinda like a bear hit with an ugly stick and a skinny little girl with weird hair, one eye, and a grudge against full sentences, both of whom appeared out of nowhere and get dumped in a strange school, you're gonna get picked on. There's no two ways about it. Looking back, I don't have the slightest clue why I stepped in, but I did. They were just so... fucked up, you know? It was kind of a novelty. And someday Raijin was going to be a damn good fighter -- if he could get around that thing where he cringed like a puppy if you looked at him cross- eyed -- and Fuujin always had something about her. Something tough. I wanted them on my side, I guess, if I was gonna have a side. So the school bully announced that anybody who wanted to mess with the new kids was messing with him, and who needs a reason anyway? And after that, they were mine.  
  
1.1.59 Â Â Â Â Â About two months later, the suggestion for a student disciplinary committee came in front of the headmaster, with a certain student at the head who'd never been a model of discipline -- but who was trying to make up for it, you see, kind of like community service. Or something. And somehow, it passed.  
  
1.1.60 Â Â Â Â Â Let me tell you something you probably already know: the easiest way to push people around is to have the law on yoyr side. If you can make the law, even better. How do you think Galbadia got to where it is? ...But that's a different story. Anyway, I'd figured that part out pretty early too. Like I say, I've always been big on practicality, and I was willing to bet a little authority could go a long way. And I was right. More than that; it was better than I expected. Even more powerful, even bigger, and as time went on and we got more control, it just became something I couldn't remember ever living without. Something almost like a home, I guess. Maybe that's what you would call it.  
  
1.1.61 Â Â Â Â Â So then things were all right for a while.  
  
1.1.62 Â Â Â Â Â Except they weren't, really.  
  
1.1.63  
  
1.1.64 Â Â Â Â Â Not that I can say what was wrong with them, or that I ever could. But somehow, my life was always just a beat out of step with everybody else's. That's okay for some people, for a while, but when you never do anything else your whole life, it starts to get really old. I thought in a vague kind of way that the committee might help, but it just made things worse. After all, if some kid who'd been calling you names behind your back and running to the teacher every time you stepped wrong for the last six years was up to maybe be expelled for something he shouldn't have had in his room and you were one half of who was going to say if he stayed or went -- who was going to pass up a temptation like that? ... Well, actually, never mind. Guess I'm talking to the wrong person here. But I wasn't. And so more people started bitching about the committee, and so more of them got taken out when it was their turn, and things just kept going down and down. And poor little Seifer feeling more and more like an outcast. Looking back, to say the least, it isn't hard to see why things went the way they did and how I could have stopped them, and I guess even then I must have known, academically. But actually turning your life around is a whole different matter... and what was more, I don't even know if I really wanted things to change. I was the angry god, and sometimes it felt kind of shitty, but most of the time it felt pretty good. Strong. Powerful.  
  
1.1.65 Â Â Â Â Â Little kids, playing cops and robbers.  
  
1.1.66 Â Â Â Â Â Where was I.  
  
1.1.67 Â Â Â Â Â So yeah, it wasn't like I didn't have problems. I still didn't sleep. When I was in the orphanage I'd just lie in bed all night, staring at the ceiling and listening to breaking glass in the back of my mind; even after I came to Garden the best I could hope for was a couple hours, after dawn. Just something about being shut up, laid out in the dark, nowhere to go but dreams, where you can't get away if you need to... I know, it's dumb. But it didn't exactly help my attitude any. I found out I could sleep in class just fine, though, and so I did that a lot. I never said I considered myself an example.  
  
1.1.68 Â Â Â Â Â There was other stuff, too -- little stuff. Squall; I mentioned that. I called him out for real now, just about every other week, it seemed like. And even though he was still the same -- worse, even; god, it pissed me off -- he always came. I don't know if it was honor, or dignity, or pride, just to get me off his back, or just to prove he really didn't give a shit one way or the other, but he came. And we fought. And nobody ever won. Most things were like that.  
  
1.1.69 Â Â Â Â Â Other stuff, stuff I don't normally talk about -- especially to you, I guess. Sex at Garden was weird; it had its own kind of culture, and you had to figure everything out pretty carefully if you were going to make a big deal of it, like some people did. I didn't. I lost my virginity at a floor party when I was fourteen. Some drunk girl. I didn't drink back then, in capital letters -- I DON'T DRINK -- so I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I just figured it was something I had to do, like picking a weapon or taking the exam. Fuck somebody. It was a status quo. Boring, really. Sticky, too long, and kind of pointless past the obvious. I don't even remember her name; maybe I never knew it. After that I didn't bother.  
  
1.1.70 Â Â Â Â Â So what does it matter? I can hear the chorus ask already. So you felt alienated and dysfunctional as an adolescent. Join the club. I asked myself pretty much the same question, back then. So what does it matter, Seifer? Well, I don't know, Seifer, what do you think? If I knew, do you think I'd be asking you, ya dumb shit? And so on. And what I finally decided was that it didn't matter, really. If I was going to be the bully, the monster, the brainless storm, well, that was what I was going to be, dammit. I was going to take a lesson from a master and just... not care.  
  
1.1.71 Â Â Â Â Â Did it work?  
  
1.1.72 Â Â Â Â Â You guess.  
  
1.1.73  
  
1.1.74 Â Â Â Â Â Summer vacation when I was seventeen. Balamb Garden had been getting letters from some little no-name rebel operation in Timber, and cheerfully ignoring them; I noticed, though, and I'd never picked much up about the Timber situation -- I was sleepy that week. So I talked the guys into it, we packed up, and we all hopped a train to go check the place out. Raijin and Fuujin were used to this kind of thing. I get weird ideas a lot; the Sorceress Wars stuff was just one example. Not sleeping might have had something to do with it, but never mind that. So we went to Timber, and while we were there, I met this girl...  
  
1.1.75 Â Â Â Â Â It feels like ages ago, but it wasn't. That was the summer I met you.  
  
1.1.76  
  
1.1.77 Â Â Â Â Â The train got in at the top of the afternoon, mid-weekend, start of summer. I remember the town was like a graveyard. It even looked that way: gray slate, white concrete, burned-out buildings, dead trains like giant coffins. Even a couple zombies, if you counted in the soldiers. Timber was its own horror movie. A capitol city eighteen years occupied, since before you or I were born. It was kind of like hell during the day. We went straight to the hotel, turned out the lights, and sat in the air- conditioning until the sun went down. There was a bunch of soldiers down the hall; I found out later that there usually were. During the day, they owned the town.  
  
1.1.78 Â Â Â Â Â After dark was another story.  
  
1.1.79 Â Â Â Â Â We'd been there just a couple days. It was a bad night; not only did the air conditioner rattle like it was trying to get away and Raijin snore like a horny moose, but there was a storm cooking just a couple miles off, a big one. You could smell it in the air, and it was starting to thunder. I got fed up and went to take a walk. The first thing I noticed, coming outside, was that most of the soldiers were off duty; not a lot of night watches. Guess that would mean extra wages. That's Galbadia for you. The second thing was that there was something going on down on the lower train tracks, past the covered bridge. I didn't have anyplace else to go, and it'd be dry down there once the skies opened, at least. So I headed down the tracks.  
  
1.1.80 Â Â Â Â Â Timber in summer, part two.  
  
1.1.81 Â Â Â Â Â I don't know if you remember that night, or if it was just one of a million in your world. I never mentioned it to you later, and you never said anything; but I know you, and I know the kinds of things you remember. If not me, I think you would have remembered the night.  
  
1.1.82 Â Â Â Â Â It was a party. Well -- sort of. My definition of "party" at that point meant about twelve kids in a dorm room, a couple bottles of something semi-toxic, cigarettes, maybe some pills or a cigarette that wasn't a cigarette, and not much else. This wasn't like that at all, but a party was the best thing I could think of to call it. There had to be hundreds of people down there, sprawled across the tracks of one of the defunct railroad lines. There was a big bonfire in the middle, and most of them were gathered around it, talking and laughing and passing around food. But there were people spread out all over the place, on the concrete walls where the line went underground, sitting on the tracks, running around, wherever. A couple guys about my age were throwing around a frisbee. There were old people there, too, mostly sitting around the fire, and a bunch of kids running around laughing and screaming, and what am I telling you for? You were there.  
  
1.1.83 Â Â Â Â Â Around then, I saw a girl -- about my age, again, most of them were; it was a little surreal -- sitting on a milk crate just outside the fire circle, with a guitar on her lap and a shaggy sheepdog mutt at her feet that looked like it had just graduated from being a big puppy. She was playing, decently, and singing something folksy about tearing prisons down, which I remember thinking at the time didn't sound like the most practical idea anyone had ever had, but what are you gonna do. A lot of the people at the fire were listening, some of the kids stopping every now and then to play with her dog, which seemed pretty gracious about it. She looked like a favorite in general, really. Long dark hair and thick bangs, and one of those hair-wrap things on the side, a long twist of colored thread, beads and feathers. T-shirt and jeans. Big brown eyes. Little and thin. Really pretty, with a sweet, throaty voice.  
  
1.1.84 Â Â Â Â Â I decided to stick around. Wouldn't anyone?  
  
1.1.85 Â Â Â Â Â She finished up the song, played one or two more, then handed the guitar off to somebody else, who started up a sing-along around the fire. Campy, everybody-love-everybody stuff. Stupid. Then the girl got up and walked out of the firelight. Well, more like she bounced. Not the kind who knew how to walk anywhere. She came toward me, and I caught myself trying to act like I belonged there.  
  
1.1.86 Â Â Â Â Â "Hi," the same voice said brightly -- a little higher, speaking, which was weird -- right next to me. Took me a minute to figure out she was talking to me. Very clever. "You new around here?"  
  
1.1.87 Â Â Â Â Â I nodded. "Just visiting. What's going on?"  
  
1.1.88 Â Â Â Â Â "Resistance bonfire," she told me, as if that explained anything, which I guess it did, later. "You must be new. I knew I hadn't seen you before. Hope you'll come back sometime -- oh -- 'scuse me -- " And then she was off again, scooping up one of the little kids, who'd taken a fall and was whimpering, and carrying him back to the fire on her hip.  
  
1.1.89 Â Â Â Â Â I just stood there watching, wishing I knew her name.  
  
1.1.90 Â Â Â Â Â You remember? That was you.  
  
1.1.91  
  
1.1.92 Â Â Â Â Â I guess I don't really have to tell you the rest. Like I said, you were there. A couple days later I saw a couple soldiers hassling the same girl -- hassling her the way law enforcement tends to when it thinks it's got somebody who matches a description and is trying to make sure. I guess I should know. It was like Raijin and Fuujin; I didn't think twice or even once, just dodged in, flashed my Garden student ID at them, and snapped something about her being in my weapons class. They ran like dogs with their tails on fire, and then the girl turned out to be you, and we went out for coffee and you told me all about Timber. The real Timber. The real Galbadia. And I finally started to see the other side of the kind of power a bully has. I finally saw the kid with the broken glasses, instead of just looking through him like I always had before. And I didn't know if I liked it. Besides, I wore glasses aswell.  
  
1.1.93 Â Â Â Â Â The good summer; the first good summer ever, I think. I met the Forest Owls not too much later. I even met your dog. We went to the big parties the resistance groups put together, the Saturday nights they claimed the bar at midnight and didn't go home till after dawn. The three of us moved from the hotel to the Owls base before long, and stayed with you all. And all that good shit. That summer was the good summer, those days were the good days. That was the best hurricane. You were.  
  
1.1.94 Â Â Â Â Â I remember it all, in pieces. I remember the third vague plan that fell through in the middle, and the fit I had at you, asking what the hell you thought you were doing. I made little cracks constantly anyway, I know, not really knowing I was doing it. Spoiled military boy. Guess I was the only one allowed to play games. I remember calling the Forest Owls a bunch of naive idealist half-wits who couldn't liberate a lobster from a seafood restaurant and would be dead before you were twenty-five. Or something like that. I think you threw a grapefruit at me. We were in the kitchen.  
  
1.1.95 Â Â Â Â Â I remember the night you came out of your room, having trouble sleeping, and found me sitting up like usual in the center room, reading the old magazines and thinking about you. I remember how we went out walking for a little while, and when we came back, we both went to your bed without needing to talk about it. I slept the whole night through, as easily as if I'd been doing it my entire life, and woke up to Angelo sprawled out on my feet and you giggling. And how after that we slept together -- and just slept, whatever anybody else thought we did. It was the first and only time in my life I got any reasonable amount of sleep. I can barely remember what it was like.  
  
1.1.96 Â Â Â Â Â I remember walking through the vacant lots where the soldiers had burned down storefronts, owned by people who might have been rebels. And one night when we saw the smoke and you dragged me out into the street; we must have knocked down a dozen soldiers, and then you carried a lost six- year-old girl piggyback to the house where her parents were hiding, me covering you both like a bodyguard. It was the first time I saw Zone and Watts act like anything but clowns -- organizing the neighbors to make a bucket line, hacking open the fire hydrant. I never apologized, or even said anything, though I thought about it.  
  
1.1.97 Â Â Â Â Â I remember the last few stinking hot weeks lying on the line between summer and autumn, when I told you that I had to go back to Garden. I imagine you probably do too. The way your eyes looked when you said okay. We never officially split up, I don't think, but then, we were never officially together. We were never official. Official was the other side, the soldiers and the Gardens; we were just kids in summer. The guys and I got on a train and went home. I know you stood and watched the train go, from the platform, until it was out of sight. I know because I was watching, too.  
  
1.1.98  
  
1.1.99 Â Â Â Â Â Why am I telling you this? I don't know. Because it's part of the story. Maybe even the most important part. Maybe not. I don't know.  
  
1.1.100 Â Â Â Â Â Just the facts.  
  
1.1.101  
  
1.1.102 Â Â Â Â Â So we went back to Garden, and everything was the same, except it was completely different. You know.  
  
1.1.103 Â Â Â Â Â Time to use the inevitable metaphor, and just hope you'll excuse me; we'd been out to the apple tree, and though we didn't exactly find an angel with a flaming sword at the gate when we came back, the garden didn't seem to fit right anymore. Something had been lost, or more like it had never been there and I just finally noticed. Bunch of stupid kids or not, at least you guys had something you were fighting for. What about us -- what about SeeD? Reputation? Money? Mostly money. Not much. Maybe I hadn't thought to ask before, but after watching you carry a toddler home on your back through a riot and a couple dozen people who didn't need to be involved fanning out to get buckets from the fountain while the soldiers tried to cut them off, it all seemed... not wrong, I guess -- I won't say my sense of justice is my best feature -- but different. Smaller. Mechanical, like we were just wind-up toys with weapons. The best toys around, though, and where the hell else did I have to go?  
  
1.1.104 Â Â Â Â Â I took the SeeD test for the first time as soon as I could, just a couple months after we got back; I should have taken it the spring before, all my courses were done, but I hadn't wanted to deal with the written test. I did it right away that fall, though; I don't know why. Something to prove to myself, maybe. We went out to some little no-name town a few miles from Galbadia's southern border, the next place they thought they were gonna get their guns on the streets. Seemed like all SeeD had been doing for the last few years had been knocking Galbadia back when it tried to take a step -- when they were hired to, that is. Just in case anyone might wonder where they were when Timber was being taken over. That was really all I could think about while I was taking the test, tell the truth. Defending the mayor's house, this time. Another big, exciting, useful sort of assignment. Nice for the people who lived there to know that SeeD was fucking around coddling students when they were supposed to be saving the place.  
  
1.1.105 Â Â Â Â Â I guess I don't need to say how the test came out. Left my post, finally showed up -- seriously -- almost an hour after the withdraw order. I thought they would have left without me, but they didn't. There were a bunch of soldiers cornering a few civilians on a street nearby, and no one had seen it. It doesn't matter, though. An hour is an hour. I didn't bother telling anyone that part; it all amounts to the same anyway, and it's not like they would have cared. Or listened. Not to me, not with my record, and my own reputation.  
  
1.1.106 Â Â Â Â Â I remember it pretty clearly, after the results. I came out of the elevator, and the guys were waiting for me, to find out how I did. Fuujin took one look at my face and she knew, but Raijin was never that quick on the uptake. I went right past them, storming back for my room, and they fell in behind me like always; I could just feel Raijin getting ready to ask, and some part of me got scared because I didn't know what I'd do to him if he did -- and Fuujin just looked at him, when she thought I wasn't looking, and shook her head. He took a minute on that, came up with the right answer for once, and then got ready to say something sort of consoling but mostly just stupid. (Maybe next time, ya know?) Fuujin swatted him one that time. And that was a little better.  
  
1.1.107 Â Â Â Â Â We hung out in my room all night, talking about how SeeD was a joke and the tests were rigged and ignoring our own curfew, and that was a lot better. Still not perfect, but better all the same.  
  
1.1.108 Â Â Â Â Â So I went back to classes for that year. I didn't have to, I guess, but I didn't want to forget anything. I was going to nail that test the next time it came up, I kept telling myself, bullshit notwithstanding. I think it was the first time I ever really wanted something. Well -- almost. And besides, going back to class kept me with the guys -- Fuujin could have left, too, but Raijin was predictably plodding through everything -- and it made me feel kind of indulgent. I'd say paternal, but I'm not a big fan of fatherhood. And I was in classes with Squall now; he'd been the year behind me. That might have been a lot more irritating, but there was something kind of satisfying about pulling dumb shit to make his life hell, in an infantile sort of way. Which was the sort of way I was about most everything that involved Squall.  
  
1.1.109 Â Â Â Â Â Of course, the part that wasn't so great was the instructor I got stuck with now. It was bad enough that we were the same age; that was just insulting. But she didn't remember me as anything but a troublemaker and a lousy student -- and the summer in Timber hadn't made me any better -- and I did remember her. Quistis was always a bossy little brat, and she hadn't grown up to much more as far as I could see. And of course I knew she didn't think much of me either... but for the first time, I started to realize that she wasn't doing it from the same length of experience as I was -- at least, not consciously. Before then, I'd seen her and Squall and Zell around, and remembered them, but it just never sank in that they didn't remember me, or why. But now I finally realized it; and I don't know why, but I decided to just play dumb. I even got a GF; hardly ever used it, never if I could help it, but I had it. There was no real point to it, I guess, except the vague feeling that it might be useful someday. And the beginning of that sense like something was coming.  
  
1.1.110 Â Â Â Â Â Time passed. You wrote to me, and I wrote back. Classes marched on the way things like classes usually do. And somehow, when my back was turned, things started changing. Some of them were little things. Some of them were big.  
  
1.1.111 Â Â Â Â Â Garden administers four SeeD tests a year; classes end at weird times, some of them, and then there are people like me. There's two each semester, one in the middle and one at the end. Graduates start running missions and getting full privileges as soon as they pass, but they aren't officially inducted to SeeD until the ball at the end of the academic year, after the spring test. So most people take that one. I took and failed all four tests that year, one after another. It might have been funny if it wasn't so stupid. By the last one, though, I sort of knew already what would happen; there was always something blatantly obvious and important that wasn't in our godawful orders, or there was always a new order that I had no problem calling bullshit to someone's face, or something like that. I have to admit, it made me start to wonder, eventually, if this was what it would be like if I made it to SeeD, and if I could really deal with that. And by the end of the year and the last test, I was starting to lose interest. I was starting to stop caring if I made it or not.  
  
1.1.112 Â Â Â Â Â But yeah, okay, it did grate at me a little. A little? Fuck. A lot. Test after test, and every single time I managed to fuck something up. I mean, I was trying. Really. All this time I'd never tried much of anything except pushing people around, and when I really tried to do something else and just couldn't get the damn thing right... I guess you can imagine. Maybe it drove me a little nuts, is all I'm saying. Not like it's a big deal now, or even that it was then. It was my own stupid fault for not waving the flag and marching in time like a big grinning idiot every chance I got. If I really wanted that I could've bit down, but I didn't, I guess, 'cause I didn't. And then things kind of got away from me.  
  
1.1.113 Â Â Â Â Â The last test. End of my last year.  
  
1.1.114 Â Â Â Â Â Okay, stay with me; this is where it gets really weird.  
  
1.1.115 Â Â Â Â Â From here on, I remember it like the first act of a play. It's all in scenes; curtain rises, and one thing happens right after another. You couldn't stop it if you wanted to. Even though everyone but the guy on stage knows exactly how it's going to end.  
  
1.1.116 Â Â Â Â Â When the curtain went up, I was on a boat to Dollet. With, just to make things really special, Squall and Zell in my squadron. Yeah. Loads of fun. Stuck between a rock and a dumb place. At least my, ha ha, experience had won me a little seniority. Which was about an inch, but of course I took a mile. And oh yeah, I could see right away that this mission was gonna be much better; I was going to luck out this time. This time, my squad was just going to get my ass killed straight out.  
  
1.1.117 Â Â Â Â Â What a relief.  
  
1.1.118  
  
1.1.119 Â Â Â Â Â Scene one. The mission. A debriefing on the boat, and then we hit the shore and pretty much ran like cattle into the combat zone. It's amazing they don't lose more students, if you ask me. We -- the intrepid and charismatic Squad B -- went to swat soldiers in the central square of Dollet City and happened to see a bunch of troops heading for the comm tower. I set us after them, and even though Zell griped at me a little, no one really seemed to mind. We hit the tower, beat hell out of the soldiers, found out just enough about what was going on that we could have stopped it if the withdraw order hadn't come exactly when it did, and from there it was the same old story. And no, before you ask, that's not a royal plural -- I'm not that nuts yet. There was teamwork involved, I guess. Some kind. I'm sure as hell not going to say I was the only one in that group who could fight... and, I mean, sure, I pretty much ignored them and went on ahead, but still, I didn't do it all. I can acknowledge that, now.  
  
1.1.120 Â Â Â Â Â Since the withdraw order had to do a little digging to find us, and since the tower turned out to have an exciting surprise, there were some complications getting back to the beach. To say the least. But we made it quickly enough, and we didn't go too far, so I figured, well, how bad could it be?  
  
1.1.121 Â Â Â Â Â Bad. Really, really bad. I was still so pissed over the tower fuckup when we got back that I ended up mouthing off hard to Xu -- the mission C.O. this time, no less -- which wasn't a great idea under any circumstances, but after my fourth time fucking over the test... Let's just say I not only failed, I got disciplined in a serious way for my little shitfit, and leave it at that. Let's definitely leave it at that.  
  
1.1.122  
  
1.1.123 Â Â Â Â Â Scene two. The ball. Of course I still had to go; it wasn't the kind of thing you just skipped out on, even if you were a flunked delinquent. And even if it weren't for the rules, I'd gotten a letter from you a couple weeks back, saying Garden was still ignoring you guys with a passion, and was there anyone you could come talk to directly, sometime...  
  
1.1.124 Â Â Â Â Â See, the thing is, I like Cid. I liked Cid back then, and I had for a while. I like him now. I couldn't really tell you why; but he always seemed like he was trying, you know what I mean? And besides that, I remembered him from the orphanage too. He'd always been pretty okay, for an adult. I know he remembered about me, too. Probably Edea said something to him about me, once. He tried to watch out for me, even if it took me a long time to realize that. And I was pretty sure that, of everyone in Garden with any power you could plead for the Owls to, he'd be the least likely to act like a jackass. So I was thinking along those lines when I wrote back to tell you to come to the ball.  
  
1.1.125 Â Â Â Â Â That part you know too, I guess. The guys and I were being typical, lurking in the corner and sneering at everyone. And then you found us, and I took you to see Cid, and it looked like you made a good impression -- what else would you make? -- because when I walked you back out to the train station shuttle you were practically glowing, and you had a contract in your hand. I somehow never thought to ask about it. Not until much too late.  
  
1.1.126 Â Â Â Â Â That was all after I saw you dancing with Squall, though.  
  
1.1.127 Â Â Â Â Â Talk about your weird feelings.  
  
1.1.128  
  
1.1.129 Â Â Â Â Â Scene three. Supervised suspension, aka what you get for snarling at a commanding officer. Basically, ten hours in an empty classroom with any one of a bunch of bored SeeD officers. No more their idea of a good time than mine, I imagine. I was on about the fifth hour of the party when a friend of the guy on duty came in, telling him something snide about three green kids getting sent to Timber on a snipe hunt. Two and two came together pretty fast, and I jumped up and started grilling the guy. It was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard of in my life -- Timber needed an army, not a handful of babies who literally just became SeeDs the day before. I'd been there, I knew they were only gonna stir up trouble and get people killed. But hey, anything to save a buck or two, right? Garden, watchdog for the world.  
  
1.1.130 Â Â Â Â Â Yeah, okay, so I lost it. So what else is new? I bolted for the door, couldn't seem to think anything but that I had to do something. The two of them did try to get in my way, but they were too surprised, I think. If they hadn't been, I doubt I would've been able to knock them over like I did; I might not even have gotten away. I don't remember how many people I plowed through on my way out. There were a lot -- that I remember. "Get out of my way" doesn't get taken real literally at a military academy. But I got out, and I got to Balamb and on a train before they knew I was gone; that was something. I would have tried to feel guilty about the whole jailbreak later, but I never had the chance.  
  
1.1.131  
  
1.1.132 Â Â Â Â Â Scene four. Deling's broadcast. The long-awaited fruit of all the bastard's fucking around with communication equipment. I'm pretty sure you realize this, but all I knew about the guy was what I knew from you, and you had plenty of opinions on our friend Vinzer. A liar, a fascist, a backstabber, a blackmailer, and a sneak, and those were his good qualities. So I didn't pay a lot of attention to what he was broadcasting. The hostage idea seemed much better at the time.  
  
1.1.133 Â Â Â Â Â And how the hell was I supposed to know Trepe was tracking me? Garden and watchdogs. Damn bad habit. Still, I really wished I'd been paying better attention; it was just amazing how fast my "backup" managed to fuck things up. I really wanted to be a SeeD? Really? I mean, watching this shit, I couldn't have told whose side we were on.  
  
1.1.134 Â Â Â Â Â Don't misunderstand me. I was pretty short on delirious dreams of heroically saving an understaffed mission. Or dreams of heroically doing anything, for that matter. I just saw that something was finally being done, even if it was such a goddamn stupid thing that doing nothing probably would have been better, and I had to try to make it count. SeeD had let enough people down. I wasn't going to let you be one of them. I remembered how much you all cared, and I guess maybe I thought if I tried to care like that too, it could make my whole stupid life worth something, somehow, something more than a few bucks per city screwed. Maybe I thought your kind of passion and compassion and occasional stupidity could make me more than just another whore with a sword. Well, I didn't really think it in those exact words at the time, but you know what I mean. There had to be more than just exterminating, killing things for money. There had to be dreams; everybody has dreams. Well, at least, I said I did -- I remember saying that to Squall at one point, clearly, though I don't remember why I did now. That's the difference between you and me, I have dreams, a dream, and you don't -- something like that. But honestly, the only dreams I ever really knew were yours, or of you. At the time I think I was really trying to convince myself. To put on a mask and pretend I was different. Better.  
  
1.1.135 Â Â Â Â Â But anyway.  
  
1.1.136 Â Â Â Â Â So after the brilliant rescue operation managed to completely screw over my chances of making a clean strike, I wound up a little lost. I mean, I still had a hostage, whom I now couldn't kill, but I couldn't let him go either without getting killed myself, and there was nowhere to go. Nowhere except back into the set storage room of the TV station, dragging Deling with me. He was heavy and puffing like a sick dog, and he was wearing some kind of cologne that smelled like honey and kerosene. I remember that clearly. My hand was cramping, too much stress, and I remember thinking I was going to drop Hyperion if I had to hold it at his fat throat much longer, and trying not to panic. We backed through the door, the asshole sneering all the way; it was dark in the storage room, and I had to pick my way through metal bits and light stands and power cords, trying not to get tangled in a big mess of purple curtains draped across the back wall. I remember noticing that there was some kind of weird light coming from someplace, and not thinking much of it at first, until it got stronger; and that I thought I could hear windchimes from somewhere nearby, and the sound set my teeth on edge.  
  
1.1.137 Â Â Â Â Â Then I realized there was someone else in the room.  
  
1.1.138  
  
1.1.139 Â Â Â Â Â Scene five.  
  
1.1.140  
  
1.1.141 SCENE FIVE  
  
1.1.142  
  
1.1.143 Â Â Â Â Â (Fade in to interior. SEIFER holding DELING as a hostage, gunblade at DELING'S throat, back facing into the center of the room. Suddenly:)  
  
1.1.144  
  
1.1.145 VOICE: (offstage) Poor, poor boy...  
  
1.1.146  
  
1.1.147 Â Â Â Â Â (SEIFER looks around, wildly, searching for the source. He sees it just as the audience does: a WOMAN, dressed all in black and wearing a strange mask, materializes from the curtains over the wall. She steps forward; he begins to retreat toward the room's door.)  
  
1.1.148  
  
1.1.149 SEIFER: Stay -- stay away from me.  
  
1.1.150  
  
1.1.151 Â Â Â Â Â (She continues to approach. He holds DELING, who has gone mysteriously silent, as if for a shield.)  
  
1.1.152  
  
1.1.153 WOMAN: So confused... stranded. Beset by doubt. Will he kill or die? Fight or run? He must decide...  
  
1.1.154  
  
1.1.155 SEIFER: (backed up to the wall; beginning to panic) Stay back. I'm serious --  
  
1.1.156  
  
1.1.157 WOMAN: Oh, are you? (She laughs, almost tenderly, with irony.) Yes, very serious. Poor little boy. He remembers, doesn't he? The skeleton boy... He wants to come, to return again, though he knows he shouldn't; the dead are easily compelled. (Pause.) And the man? What does he want? I think I know. Would you like me to tell you?  
  
1.1.158  
  
1.1.159 SEIFER: You... Stop it. Shut up.  
  
1.1.160  
  
1.1.161 Â Â Â Â Â (She stands center stage, commanding the room, he backed almost into the far corner. He is panicking by now, shaking; the gunblade is beginning to drop in his confusion.)  
  
1.1.162  
  
1.1.163 WOMAN: Let me help you, little boy... let me show you the pretty nightmares you flee. Everyone has dreams, you know. Even little boys long dead. What do you dream, my little boy? Who killed you?  
  
1.1.164  
  
1.1.165 SEIFER: (nearly whispering) Who are you?  
  
1.1.166  
  
1.1.167 WOMAN: Don't you know? I'm a hurricane.  
  
1.1.168  
  
1.1.169 Â Â Â Â Â (She takes another step forward. He closes his eyes, involuntarily.)  
  
1.1.170  
  
1.1.171 Look at him struggle! (Laughs again, softly.) Poor child, hooked on the line. Poor little boy, so hurt, so misused. How can you decide anymore? What's right or wrong? Go or stay? Live or die?  
  
1.1.172  
  
1.1.173 Â Â Â Â Â (Pause.)  
  
1.1.174  
  
1.1.175 SEIFER: (quietly) Don't call me that.  
  
1.1.176  
  
1.1.177 WOMAN: What?  
  
1.1.178  
  
1.1.179 SEIFER: I'm not a boy. Don't call me that. Don't ever call me that. I don't know who the fuck you think you are or what you're trying to pull with this creepy voodoo bullshit, but I am no one's goddamn boy, and I -- I'm never going to be.  
  
1.1.180  
  
1.1.181 WOMAN: I see... Does the boy think he's all grown up? Does he think he's a man? But what of the nights, the darkness... (She takes another step, trapping him.) He thinks to overcome -- but first, he must come. If you wish an end to childhood's games, come; and I will show you the heart of the storm. I will teach you, my little one, things that make the belly of the world quake with glory...  
  
1.1.182  
  
1.1.183 Â Â Â Â Â (She reaches out her hand toward him; mesmerized, he stares at it, his gunblade falling slowly back to his side at last. DELING breaks free, stumbling from the room in uncomprehending fear.)  
  
1.1.184  
  
1.1.185 (gently) Take my hand, Seifer. Follow me to a place of no return.  
  
1.1.186  
  
1.1.187 Â Â Â Â Â (Numbly, he does. She clasps it between both of hers, caressing it lightly, for a moment; and then she turns, leading him like a small child, back into the folds of the draperies. The light fades; they are both lost in the growing shadows, and vanish as suddenly as she appeared.)  
  
1.1.188  
  
1.1.189 Â Â Â Â Â (Curtain.) 


End file.
